LONDON, Aug 30 — London’s once bustling City finance district is grinding back to life, but it bears the scars of the deadly pandemic, sparking fresh questions over the future of the so-called “Square Mile”.
Britain fully exited lockdown last month, buoyed by speedy vaccination, but many workers appear in no hurry to return to the office amid fears over the Delta Covid variant.“There remains an underlying reluctance of many to risk exposure to the virus, either in the workplace or on the journey to work,” Remit Consulting’s corporate real estate specialist Lorna Landells told AFP.
“When I’m looking out of my office window, the streets look fairly empty,” said Nigel Wilson, the head of insurer Legal & General, in a recent interview with The Guardian newspaper.‘London will not go back’ “It will look quite a lot different during the day and central London will not go back to the footfall that we had before — people are concerned about the risks of travelling and they’ve discovered they can do things in a different way.”
Almost 80 per cent of City workers plan to be back in the office from September, according to a recent survey by recruitment firm Michael Page.City authorities are putting a positive gloss on the outlook for the area, the financial clout of which already remains uncertain as a result of Brexit. The Corporation runs the Square Mile, or historic financial district, which includes the Bank of England and St Paul’s Cathedral.